Imagine

by Jill Barnett

  She could hold her own with other women, too. Make them understand her desire that the world be fair and equal and just for everyone, male or female. Only her colleagues, father, and uncles understood her absolute love of the law. It was her life.

  But she wasn’t certain she should or could defend her choice to this quiet young girl. She certainly wasn’t going to contradict the girl’s dead mother.

  She needed to think long and hard about how to deal with these children. She knew she had to understand them, to be able to think like them and see the world through their eyes or she’d never be able to help.

  Yet with them, she felt completely unnerved, like she was walking into court unprepared. She felt responsible for them. They had no one else but her.

  She watched Lydia play with the baby. Even now she didn’t smile. Margaret realized that she’d never seen Lydia smile.

  Lydia picked that moment to look up.

  She has old eyes, Margaret thought. Too old for a young girl. Margaret nodded at Annabelle. “I’ll take her for you.”

  “No.” Lydia stepped back. “She’s my sister.”

  Margaret was caught completely off guard by the sharpness in the girl’s voice. Lydia turned away, pointedly ignoring Margaret. She began to sing a silly song to Annabelle.

  A minute or so later, Lydia took Annabelle’s hand and walked slowly away. Margaret saw that Lydia was putting distance between them for a purpose. And although it was only a few feet, at that moment it seemed like miles.

  “Miss Smith! Miss Smith! Something’s wrong with Hank!”

  Margaret grabbed Theodore as he barreled into the tepee. “Calm down, Theodore. Please.”

  “But Hank’s sick. Hurry! Please. He might die! Please.” He looked up at her. “Everyone dies.”

  Margaret turned to Lydia. “I’ll be right back.” She took Theodore’s hand, and they ran across the clearing toward Hank’s hut. The sun had just set, and there was nothing but a small pink and gold glow in the purple sky. She stepped inside the dark hut.

  Hank lay in the corner.

  She moved swiftly, Theodore right behind her.

  “See?”

  Margaret squatted down and looked at Hank. He was frighteningly still.

  “Is he dead?”

  She laid her ear on his chest, which suddenly shuddered as he inhaled in a loud snore.

  Theodore jumped.

  “It’s okay. Stand back a bit.” She crawled forward, and squinting, she brought her face close to Hank’s. Her eyes teared from the whiskey fumes.

  He’s dead all right, she thought, sitting back on her heels and waving his breath away. Dead drunk. She leaned over him and spotted a half-empty bottle of whiskey clutched tightly in his hand. Theodore shifted closer.

  “He’s asleep,” she lied, prying the bottle from his rough hand.

  Hank snorted like a pen of hungry pigs and flung his other hand over his head, then muttered a string of words that turned her face bright red.

  She carefully hid the whiskey bottle in the folds of her skirt. She placed her hand on Theodore’s shoulder and blocked his view of Hank. “Come along. You can stay with us. We should leave Mr. Wyatt to his rest.”

  “But I was s’pposed to stay here tonight.”

  She couldn’t see the boy’s expression, but she could hear the disappointment in his voice.

  “He said I could ’cause I helped build the hut. He said he’d let me play his harmonica.”

  “I know.” She slid her arm around his shoulder and gently guided him from the hut. “Another night, okay?”

  There was a loud snore from behind them. She wanted to clobber Hank Wyatt.

  Theodore walked quietly beside her, his head down and his feet dragging through the sand. Again she felt a rush of anger at Hank.

  Kicking sand in front of him, Theodore scuffed over to a palm tree where they had tied up the goat for the night. He talked quietly to the animal.

  She took a deep breath and looked around, because she knew that the anger she felt wouldn’t help any of them.

  There was no moon yet, and just a few stars had begun to glitter in the vast blue-black sky. In the nearby bushes, night bugs chittered while the waves methodically pounded the beach like war drums.

  She watched Theodore say good night to the goat and reluctantly enter the tepee, his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders sagging. It just ate at her to see disappointment in a child, especially a little boy who already had more pain than any five-year-old should.

  Pausing at the entrance, she looked across the clearing to the hut. How could anyone be so selfish? She lifted the half-empty whiskey bottle and stared at it for a long time, then shook her head in disgust. What a complete waste.

  By the time the moon had risen, the temperature dropped by several degrees and the wind had picked up. The cracks in the thatch of the tepee glowed with golden light from the tilley lamp. Inside Margaret sat with Annabelle in her lap while Lydia and Theodore were huddled under blankets.

  According to Theodore, it was story time.

  “And then the wolf said”—Theodore lowered his voice--Open up, little piggy, and let me in or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!’ “

  “Assault, unlawful entry,” Margaret murmured. Theodore nodded. “He was a bad wolf.”

  “Bad wolf!” Annabelle said. “Sit! Sit! Sit! Bad wolf!”

  “No, Annabelle, that’s bad word, not bad wolf. Wurrr-da.” Margaret sounded it out. “Word.”

  “Sit!” Annabelle grinned.

  Margaret gave up and prayed the child would not be able to pronounce the h anytime soon.

  “You wanna know what happens next?”

  Margaret looked at Theodore. “What?”

  “The wolf blew down the house of sticks like the house of straw and both piggies had to run and run and run to their brother’s house of bricks. And the same thing happened again.”

  Margaret looked at him. “You mean the bad wolf—”

  “Sit!”

  Margaret ignored her this time and continued, “He blew down the house of bricks? He must have some powerful breath.” Margaret thought one whiff of Hank’s breath could have melted a few bricks.

  “Nope.” Theodore grinned.

  “He didn’t blow down the brick house?”

  “Uh-uh. He tried and tried, but the smart little piggy had built a strong house. Finally the wolf climbed up on the roof and jumped down the chimney. And you know what happened next?”

  “What?”

  Theodore moved his face really close to Margaret’s. She waited while he grinned. She sensed he was building up to the dramatic ending.

  “The pigs put a big kettle of boiling water on the fire, and the wolf fell into it.” His eyes grew big, and he wiggled his fingers at her. “And they cooked him and ate him all up!”

  “They ate the wolf?” Margaret made a sick face. “That’s horrible.”

  Lydia looked up and scowled at her. “My mother used to read us that story all the time. From a book of fairy tales. It’s Theo’s favorite story.”

  Margaret looked at Theodore, who was frowning thoughtfully, then at Lydia, whose look hadn’t changed. Margaret closed her eyes and wanted to kick herself. At that moment she was certain she had disappointed the kids—Theodore in particular—just as much as Hank had.

  In the wee hours of the morning, before the birds had wakened, before the tide had waned, and when all were sound asleep, another storm hit the island. It swirled in from the west with rain and clouds and wind. The rain pattered on the sand and on waxy tropical leaves. The clouds blocked the moon and the stars. And the wind blew in a howling wail that sounded like a wolf. Then it huffed and puffed and blew their huts down.

  Chapter 11

  Hank awoke to the smell of wet goat hair, which was about the same as sticking his face in an old prison work boot. He quickly turned his head away, and immediately regretted it. He had one mother of a headache.

  He cl
osed his mouth tightly and regretted that, too. It felt as if a thousand woolly sheep had stampeded through his mouth. The goat shifted closer and shoved its stinking, wet muzzle in his face, then bleated loudly.

  With a moan of pain, Hank rolled away, his head throbbing like a hammer on quarry rock. He held his head in his hands and waited for the pain to subside. After a few deep breaths, he squinted, then cracked open one burning, bloodshot eye.

  Bright sunlight almost blinded him. He flinched and rubbed his face with his hands but quickly pulled his hands away and stared at them, scowling.

  They were wet. He raised his head a few inches off the ground, an action for which he deserved a medal, and looked down at his clothes. He was soaking wet.

  He sat upright slowly, very slowly, so his head could keep up with him. His eyes focused gradually. The goat stood a few feet away, staring at him while it chewed on something.

  Hank watched it for moment, then saw some metal sticking out of its mouth. He frowned. What the hell was that blasted animal eating now? He started to crawl toward it, and the goat took two steps backward.

  “What have you got there?”

  The goat backed up again.

  Hank muttered a few choice names and crawled forward.

  The goat stepped back, still chewing.

  “Here, goat. Come here.”

  The goat blinked.

  “Come to Papa.”

  He shifted slightly, and the goat moved back again. He froze on his hands and knees, his gaze locked with the goat’s.

  One . . . two . . . three!

  He shot forward.

  The goat shot backward.

  Hank landed face down in the monkey grass. He could feel the goat standing over him. Taking deep breaths, he slowly lifted his head.

  Something hard conked him on the back of the head. He sucked in a breath of pain through gritted teeth and looked up.

  The goat had trotted away.

  Hank glanced down at the grass. A silver bottle was lying next to his head. He sat up, one hand rubbing the sore spot on his head.

  Frowning, he picked up the bottle. He turned it one way, then the other. It had a few nicks and some teeth marks on it. But it was just an old perfume bottle, like the one he’d thrown overboard. Not a jewel or a stone on the worthless thing.

  He took a deep breath and looked up, then froze. He dropped the bottle and slowly scanned the area around him. “What the hell?”

  His hut was gone. The roof. The walls. Gone. All that remained was the bamboo frame.

  He got up, and his feet sank in the muddy grass. He looked around for the first time and saw the remnants of a storm. Outside the bamboo frame, the palm fronds and leaves that had last night been his walls and roof now littered the ground and were sticking out from bushes and shrubs. Fresh rain dripped from the trees and bushes, and steam was beginning to rise from puddles of rainwater in the grass and sand.

  He spun around and looked toward Smitty’s tepee. There was nothing left standing. Only a huge messy pile of thatched matting that lay atop some of the trunks and crates she’d salvaged.

  He swore and ran across the clearing, thinking she and those kids were somewhere under it all. He was a few feet away when he realized they weren’t there at all.

  He took off running down the beach. When he’d gone about a couple of hundred feet, he heard squeals of laughter and stopped.

  Smitty stood in the shallow tide holding onto Annabelle’s hands. Whenever a small wave would drift in on the low morning tide, she would fling the baby up like a swing, just letting her toes brush through the seafoam.

  A few feet back, Theodore was burrowing in the sand. He looked up, then began to holler and jump up and down and point. Lydia rushed down from the bank, her arms filled with bananas.

  Hank shielded his eyes from the bright sun and looked out toward where the kid was pointing on the eastern side of the water. Every few seconds, a group of porpoises arced one by one over the glassy sea, making white, foamy sea spray when they hit the water.

  He remembered the first time he’d ever seen a school of porpoises leap from the sea like that. There was something sobering about it; the realization that other things lived on the same earth, an awareness that humans weren’t the only things trying to eke out a life. Some long-buried part of him had reacted just like Theodore.

  Watching them now, he still felt that same sense of awe. And he relished it because he hadn’t felt that way for so long. Too long.

  He stood there, soaking up the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted. He watched the porpoises, something that in the past few years he’d forgotten existed.

  With an overwhelming sense of bitterness, he wondered what else prison had stolen from him. In the distance he could hear sea auks crying from the cliffs. Their keening didn’t sound like the call of birds but of men who had been condemned.

  Men cried in prison. He had cried in prison. When no one knew.

  He threw his head back and took in deep breaths of sea air. He was free. He wouldn’t hear the loud and brittle clank of the cell closing tonight. He wouldn’t have heard it last night either, but the whiskey he’d drunk was a little insurance. It gave him one night of sound sleep, something he felt as if he’d never get enough of.

  He opened his eyes and looked above him, reminding himself he wasn’t staked. He wasn’t locked in a box in the scorching sun. His ankles weren’t chained together, and he wasn’t in a cell.

  Overhead, gulls soared across the blue sky and circled above the dancing porpoises, swooping down, teasing. Off to the right, a waterspout shot up from a group of rocks near the edge of the headland, and its spray picked up rainbow colors in the bright morning air. The sea was easy; the waves drifted in instead of beating the shore.

  And Smitty and Annabelle were laughing.

  He looked back at them. Smitty stood in the shallow water, Annabelle propped on her hip while the tide lapped at her calves and sprayed water up her thin, ragged skirt. He could see through it.

  “Hank! Hank!” Theodore ran up the beach. He skidded to a stop in front of him. “Look!”

  Hank looked in the kid’s outstretched hands. Bits of blue, green, and amber glass polished smooth and round by the force of the sea were stuck to his small palms with globs of wet sticky sand.

  “You know what these are?”

  “Pieces of colored glass.”

  “Uh-huh. Miss Smith said that if you melt the sand on this beach and then let it cool, you know what you’d have?”

  “What?”

  “You would have glass.”

  Hank watched Smitty laughing at Annabelle. “She said that, did she?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A wave splashed on her, and she raised the squealing little girl high in the air. From this distance Hank could see those incredible legs of Smitty’s limned by sunlight through the wet, flimsy cotton of her dress. With her arms raised, her whole figure from her breasts down stood in silhouette.

  He forgot to breathe. Hell, he couldn’t breathe.

  Spilling down her back was a thick wad of tangled blond hair, damp and curling and so damn female that even for a wagon load of gold he wouldn’t have pulled his gaze away.

  “And look at this.”

  “Yeah, kid.” Hank watched her. If he moved just a little closer and to the left, he could get a better view.

  Theodore tugged on the tail of his shirt. “You’re not paying attention.”

  Hank grunted, his gaze stuck on Smitty.

  The kid tugged again. “Hank?”

  Nothing.

  “Hank.” Theodore’s voice had grown smaller. And in that sound Hank heard something he hadn’t thought about in too many years to count. The pain of being ignored. He knew what it was like to be treated as if he didn’t exist.

  He glanced down. Theodore looked back at him with such awe and expectancy that Hank felt a small twinge of that guilt he had told himself he never experienced.

  Theodore quickly dumped
the bits of glass in his pants’ pocket and pulled out something else. He raised his sandy hands higher. “See?”

  He looked at the kid’s hands. Cupped inside them was a small but perfect sand dollar.

  Hank stared at it and laughed to himself. It hadn’t taken a wagon load of gold to rip his gaze away from the most incredibly carnal sight he’d seen in years.

  It had taken one small white sand dollar.

  Only a sucker could be had that cheap.

  He shook his head. His life story.

  The salvaged trunks turned out to be more than a godsend. To Margaret, they were as welcome as buried treasure. And something that was just as handy was Hank’s skill at picking locks, although she didn’t tell him so. She was busy going through one of the two trunks he’d unlocked.

  She gasped loudly and straightened, then realized Annabelle was asleep nearby. She cast a quick glance at the baby. She hadn’t moved. Clutching her prize find, she turned back. “Look,” she said in a loud whisper and held up a small bar of French-milled soap.

  Lydia and Theodore blankly stared at her. The same way they had when she’d found the toothbrushes and tin of toothpowder.

  She held it out. “See? It’s soap. Real soap! We can bathe and wash our hair.” She closed her eyes briefly. “A bath. A real bath.” She sighed and gripped the soap a little tighter.

  “Yuk!”

  She crossed her arms and gave Theodore a direct look. “A bath wouldn’t hurt you, young man.”

  He shivered and wrinkled his freckled nose.

  She felt Hank’s look and glanced up at him. He was eyeing her soap.

  “I believe I’ll keep this,” she said pointedly and tucked it into the deep pocket of her skirt, the same safe place she’d put a toothbrush and tooth powder.

  She and Hank had spent the past half an hour arguing over what was important to their survival. Margaret had gathered clothing, toothbrushes, a hair brush, and something that caught Lydia’s attention—satin hair ribbons.

  Hank had a pocketknife, tools, and a flint. He just finished picking another of the locked trunks and opened the lid. She watched him pull out a man’s cap with a long brim, look at it, then put it on. It fit perfectly.